Scotland Bill

Lord Maxton Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maxton]

That, of course, is not what the Scottish National Party wants. It wants an independent, separate state established as Scotland. It is not really interested, although it may demand it, in more powers for a Scottish Parliament.

[Lord Wigley]

I appreciate that that is the position of the SNP. I do not think it has been in any way coy about it. I do not believe it has ever shied away from making it quite clear that independence is its objective. One may or may not agree with that, but that is its position.

[Lord Maxton]

The fact is, however, that it never tells us exactly what it means by the term “independence”.

[Lord Wigley]

Let me make it clear that if I used the term “independence”, I would not use it in the way that UKIP uses it—wanting to pull out of Europe and believing that you cannot be independent without being a state with a wall around it. I believe there has to be co-operation between independent countries and within frameworks such as the European Union. Indeed, there has to be co-operation within these islands, but that relationship may be a new relationship.

The reason I was pointing out the speech made by Sir John Major was that it should be relevant to the parties opposite. It should be relevant that their former Prime Minister made a far-reaching proposal that may well be relevant in the context of what the noble Lord, Lord Lang, spoke about earlier in this debate, and this should be considered.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Maxton]

My Lords, when I saw what my position was on the list of speakers, and recognising the lateness of the hour, I was tempted to start by saying that everything I want to say has already been said and that I will therefore not make a speech at all. However, I decided against it.

I have been a supporter of devolution for a long time. Throughout the whole of my parliamentary career I have campaigned for it. In fact, if noble Lords look back through history, they will find that my uncle, Jimmy Maxton, was one of the signatories to the 1924 Private Member’s Home Rule Bill for Scotland, introduced by one Geordie Buchanan; so even the family history, let alone my own, is good on it. I have always supported devolution because it is part of the process of moving to a more democratic state, where decisions are taken by people at the appropriate level for them to be taken. Therefore devolution for Scotland was right. When my noble friend Lord O’Neill started attacking the noble Lords, Lord Forsyth and Lord Lang, I thought he was going to attack them because they did push the whole question of devolution forward.

During the 1980s, there was an increasing democratic deficit in Scotland whereby legislation could be introduced down here without having a majority of Members in Scotland. In fact, over the years, there was a decreasing number of Members in Scotland. Of course, the introduction of the poll tax, for which both noble Lords can take some responsibility, was probably the thing above all that pushed people in Scotland to accept that there had to be a better way of running their affairs in Scotland. Devolution did not start in the 1970s. Arguably, it was started in 1885 with the introduction of the office of Secretary of State. Bit by bit, over the years, there has been a gradual increase in the number of things that Scotland has been allowed to do—separate Scottish legislation, the Grand Committee, and the Grand Committee meeting throughout Scotland, which the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, introduced. All that has been part and parcel of the process of increasing democracy.

When my late good friend Donald Dewar said that it was a process, not the end, I am sure he meant that it was part of a democratic process that had to go on. In Scotland, we have not shifted democracy further down to the levels where people ought to be taking more decisions—in their own societies and communities. Nationalism has stopped that. Nationalism has been the enemy of the democratic process, not its friend. That is not because the SNP is an undemocratic party—I believe that it believes in democracy. The problem has been that every time anyone suggests that there should be some form of change to the democratic process—more devolution, more powers to Scotland—the SNP says that this is yet one more step towards independence. That is wrong; we must not allow that. That is why, in my view, the SNP and nationalism have been the enemy of democracy. That has also stopped us saying that some things might be better done taken away from the Scottish Parliament and given back to the British Parliament or to the European Parliament. There is a whole broad band of things that we might look at, but we do not look at them properly or logically in a democratic way; we look at them in terms of how they relate to nationalism and the SNP's agenda. That is wrong.

Therefore, we ought to be doing three things. First, we ought to be arguing the case for the union as strongly as we can. My noble friend Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale—I am the only person who knows where Glenscorrodale is and has been there—who is not in his place at present, was quite right when he listed the organisations that had to make the case. He missed one out, which is the most obvious. We must persuade the Scottish media to be prepared to listen to our arguments and not just those of the Scottish National Party. I wrote at least three letters to the Herald during the election campaign; the Herald refused to take them because it said that they were too political.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Maxton]

Yes, quite. We have to get that case across. My first point is that we must make the case for the union, because there is a very good case to be made. Secondly, we must ask the SNP why it wants us to separate. What is the case for independence? If we look at history we see that various things divide people from people and make them say, “That is why we want to be separate”. Language is one. We have the same language. Religion is another. Scotland may be divided by religion, but Scotland and England are not divided by religion. Another is difference over boundaries. There is no natural boundary between Scotland and England. I remember that when I used to go north as a child with my father and we crossed the Solway he used to say, “We are now in Scotland”. If you drive that road now, you will see that the sign that says, “You are now in Scotland”, is at least a mile and a half further up the road from the Solway, so even that is a movable feast. You could not set up a frontier or boundary between the two countries. There is no natural divide.

What divides us? History, which the SNP distorts the whole time. The SNP refers to Bannockburn as if somehow it was a great victory for the Scottish people and somehow makes Bonnie Prince Charlie into a great nationalist hero. If Bonnie Prince Charlie wanted to be the King of Scotland or to put his father on the throne in Scotland, he could have done it. Why did he march south into England and get defeated? He did not want the throne of Scotland but that of the United Kingdom. History is the one thing that possibly divides us—but only just. The other is sport.

My noble friend mentioned that he was at Hampden singing “Flower of Scotland”. I have to beat him at that. I was at Murrayfield in 1990 when David Sole marched out and Scotland won the Grand Slam. We all sang “Flower of Scotland” and I was among them singing heartily. I accept that I was singing the words printed in the programme and did not know them off by heart, but I was singing them heartily. I support Scotland when it plays. I will also support the British team when it takes part in the Olympics next year. I even support Europe in the Ryder Cup. It depends on what the sporting occasion is as to where my support will lie.

There is no divide, so the SNP has to tell us why it wants us to split away from the rest of the United Kingdom. I am in some ways typical in this.

[Lord Wigley]

The one area that the noble Lord has not touched on is the possible difference in social aspiration. England and London are overwhelmingly Conservative and Scotland is not. Is he happy that Scotland should be governed perennially by right-of-centre parties when his own country does not espouse those values?

[Lord Maxton]

Those may be the social aspirations in London but I am not at all convinced. Certainly in several elections recently, the Labour Party has had a clear majority of Members of Parliament from London. Equally, the social aspirations of the people of Manchester are very similar to those of the people of Glasgow, as are those of the people of Newcastle to those of the people of Edinburgh, Glasgow and elsewhere. Those are the aspirations of the urban working class as opposed to the rural working class. The aspirations of people from the highlands are different from those elsewhere.

The third thing that the SNP has to do is say what it means by “independence”. If you look at its own Scottish National Party website, it still does not tell you what it means. I have always assumed that it wanted to establish—I will not use the word “separate” because I gather it objects to that—an independent nation state on its own, with its own social security system, army, ambassadorial services around the world, a taxation system that is totally separate from ours and a currency, unless it wishes to be in Europe when Europe will tell it that it has to adopt the euro. I always thought that that was what it meant. It now seems to want to fudge that. It is constantly fudging what independence means. To me, it is clear cut; that is what it means.

I do not know whether I, as someone who comes here and has a flat in London, will have an English passport or a Scottish one. Presumably, when you come from Scotland to England and it is a separate state, you will have to carry a passport. Some people say that that is how it is in Europe. I have to carry a passport if I go to France, Germany, Spain or Portugal—all parts of Europe. What is so different in that? Does it want that or does it just want devolution-max? No, it does not want that. Its own supporters hate the English so much that they want an independent, separate state. It is time that we demanded that the SNP tells us exactly what it wants an independent Scotland to be and what it means by that term. That is why, although I give the Bill a cautious welcome, I will consider some details at considerable length in Committee in the coming weeks.